Sven's life in Oz

When I first realised I would be living alone I was rather worried that I would have nothing to do, no one to do it with and nowhere to do it.  It turns out that all those people who said “Sveny, you have nothing to worry about” were right: I’m jam-packed till the middle of the week after next already.  I’m not complaining; I love being busy.  It’s nice to have things to do to get me out of the house.

James’s flat finally completed this week and on Friday he moved the last of his stuff out of my home and now we are now officially living alone.  Of course I was straight round on Friday night to help him unpack and get everything set up.  I’m quite jealous as his flat is twice the size of mine and has two toilets, but I only need one bathroom so it’s not much of a complaint, is it?  After a quick dinner at the local Thai restaurant the time came to go home, back to my flat for my first ever night of living alone.  It was a very strange feeling saying goodbye to someone I’ve seen every day for the past nearly four years, but I’m sure it will become more natural with time. Back at home I decided the best way to really enjoy the first night of solitude was to stay up all night watching The Matrix and drinking gin-and-tonics and Frangelico.  I woke up at 2:30am on the sofa and dragged myself into bed.  An inauspicious beginning if ever there were one.

The following day I could hardly think for things going on.  James and our friend Kristie arrived at my flat just as I was putting on my Bioré nose strip and took me out to buy a new kettle and a shedload of booze, and my second attempt at wrenching out those blackheads was thwarted by my afternoon date arriving literally the very second I applied it to my face.  Clearly Fate had other plans for my nasal sebum that day, and I was forced to bring it on the date with me for an afternoon of bowls in the sun. It’s a very popular sport amongst the youth in Australia, mainly because you stand around in the beautiful weather and drink all afternoon, I should imagine. Certainly that’s the appeal for me.  Amazingly I managed to come away with only a very slight toasting, given I was standing in direct sunlight for most of the afternoon and have the DNA of a ginger person. By rights I should be lobster-coloured.  Perhaps the nasal sebum has hidden properties…

After my topping up my Vitamin D and alcohol levels at the bowling green I was back at James’s flat within an hour to help him break in the carpet by spilling wine all over it.  This is where the shedloads of booze comes in. We sat on the floor, ate crisps and drank cheap sparkling wine till the place was littered with empty bottles and I almost had to crawl to the taxi to get home.  I rolled in at about 3am and, after some ill-advised twittering (I always say the most ludicrous things when I am drunk) I passed out with my head in my laptop some time around four.  Thank the gods for the thunderstorm today – I had promised to hit the Danks Street Festival but the rain put an end to that plan and let me mooch about the house in my trackies all day.  A well-deserved rest, I feel.

Next week, in amongst the dinners, birthday parties, dates and movies, I also have to hold down a full-time job and get 8 hours a night.  Good job I can multi-task!

Well, dear friends, I have some bad news and there’s no easy way to tell you this, so I guess I had better just come right out and say it: James and I have decided to split up.  I know this is going to come as a shock to you, so I prepared some FAQs for you to help you deal with the news and prevent you turning to drink, losing your job and winding up in the gutter.  Obviously this all my point of view and I can’t speak for James, but I think we are both of a similar mind and he read this before I posted so anything really egregious has been taken out already.

What happened?
Certainly for the past little while something has been amiss and both James and I have not been happy with our relationship.  Everyone has their peaks and troughs and we dealt with ours like anyone else, but the peaks were getting shorter and lower, while the troughs were getting longer and closer together.  There comes a point when you have to say to yourselves that perhaps another round of “we must try harder” just isn’t going to cut it and there might be something more to what you are feeling.

I confess that I felt this more keenly than James, so last Friday I decided that the time had come to have the awkward talk where nothing is off the table.  Previously it was just not an option – splitting up was simply not on the cards – but this time things were different.  I didn’t go into the conversation planning to end everything, but in times like these all you can do is say how you feel and see what happens.  So that’s what we did.  I said everything that was on my mind, exactly how I felt, and what I thought the options were.  Then I waited for James’s response.  For the first time since I have known him, he gathered his thoughts.  He agreed with me.  We talked about what we should do, what we would do afterwards in each case, and how we felt about each one, and then, twenty minutes after we started, we finished.  It was all very amicable – sad, of course, desperately so – but we opened the good wine we had been saving and enjoyed a quality drink together.

But you were such a good couple!
Well thanks for saying so.  James and I are great friends, and we have great friends; how could we not all have a great time together?  This was one of the reasons that breaking up was so hard to identify as the right thing to do.  We have a whale of a time with our friends, we have great jobs and prospects, supportive families and good health: how could anyone possibly be unhappy with all of that?  The problem was that day to day we simply weren’t making one another happy.  What to do? Stay together for potential future you have, or consider the actual happiness you are feeling?  Clearly, we chose the latter.

So what happens now?  Are you coming back to England?
No.  I love it here.  I love my British friends to death, but I have a great life in Australia and I’m certainly not giving it up less than a year after I arrived here.  I’m sure James feels the same.  Things are pretty much carrying on as normal for now.  I have moved into the spare room, but like it or not, James has been my best friend for three-and-a-half years and that was never the problem.  We get on famously and with a few changes to the domestic arrangements things are going just fine.  We have some joint debts to pay off (like the flights to the UK in three months!) and once that is done, I suppose we’ll assess what we should do next – move out, divide up the stuff, move somewhere else with more people, or just carry on as flatmates – but for now there’s no awkwardness or hostility and we both have our own lives.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

So that’s it.  Just what Sydney needs: another two single gays. But with all the great friends we have made together over the past few years, at least we’ll never really be alone.

Let me start with belated Easter wishes for you all, and the usual apology for taking so long to send you news of our adventures.  As you will see, we have been extremely busy of late.  I shall try not to bore you with too much detail, but there’s a lot to cram in so pull up a comfortable chair, a cup of tea and a biscuit, and when you’re comfortable, we’ll begin.

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Can you believe Christmas is nearly here?  Where did the time go?  It’s funny to think that this time last year I was explaining to Jeremy (a work colleague from New Zealand) the benefits of a wintry Christmas and this year James and I are on the other side of the world enjoying the beautiful weather and planning to spend Christmas Day on the beach.  How things change!  I’ll avoid the usual waffling intro rounding up birthday wishes and weddings and just get straight on to the news.

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It seems that all I needed was to get all that off my chest; once I told the truth and shamed my devil I felt much better.  Today, despite the weather predicting rain, thunder and lightening and other apocalyptic harbingers of the Beast, the sun was scorching and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  My sister and her boyfriend got engaged last week and today was ring-shopping day: they’re getting a temporary ring till they return to the UK to get a proper one.

First we met Jim for lunch (he’s the only one of us with a job, so it was the least we could do):

Then we went and picked a ring for Kara, which was VERY exciting:

Then I bought some stationery which, as we all know, is one of my favourite things in the world, before we all went and hung out by the big Christmas tree in Martin Place:

And now it’s 6pm and I’m drinking Jacob’s Creek on special and looking forward to the weekend.  Oh, and my furniture is released from Customs tomorrow but the delivery company can’t deliver it till after 5 January, so we’re going to pick it up on Monday ourselves.  I knew I didn’t have a job yet for a reason – despite everything, I still get to sleep in my own bed before Christmas.  I’m back, bitches!